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State of The Trout: Rabies Edition

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“Jenny!” you might be scolding me. “You haven’t been blogging or updating things like, at all! What is wrong with you?”

Rabies. Or, more accurately, avoidance of rabies. If you follow me on Twitter (@Jenny_Trout), you may remember the bat excitement we had a couple weeks ago. Over a period of four nights, we had like, four or five bats. It may sound like something that would be easy to count, but after waiting for nightly battle like a stronghold under siege, ones’ memory gets murky. Anyway, since there were bats hanging out in our living space, not paying rent, possibly biting us in the night, we’re all having post exposure rabies vaccination. Which is fun for the whole family!

I’ve also been hard at work on various projects, including The Afflicted, which is long overdue for an update, and a Buffy recap, which is also long overdue, but I am now more than half finished with. I’m also plugging ahead hard to get The Ex finished. It is also more than halfway finished. But you’ll get the Buffy recap first.

Other things I have been doing are A) having something amazing happen to me in Chicago that I cannot share with you until I get permission from the Powers That Be, and B) knitting to calm my raging anxiety. Also, guesting on Doing It By The Book, where we talked about 50 Shades of Grey. If you guys have missed my snark, click that link. Apparently it’s been welling up in my diseased little heart since I quit doing my recaps, and KABOOM. Snarkcano.

I’ll have book news and a cover for The Ex really soon.

What are you guys up to?

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Here for the first time because you’re in quarantine and someone on Reddit recommended my Fifty Shades of Grey recaps? Welcome! Consider checking out my own take on the Billionaire BDSM genre, The Boss. Find it on AmazonB&NSmashwords, iBooks, and Radish!

32 Comments

  1. Amy
    Amy

    Should we throw you a Fun Run For The Cure?

    Just in case you don’t watch The Office, that reference is in fact hilarious.

    September 7, 2014
    |Reply
  2. JennyTrout
    JennyTrout

    I just watched an episode of that for the first time the other night! I’m going to have to watch it, because it’s hilarious.

    September 7, 2014
    |Reply
  3. Emerald
    Emerald

    Snarkcano is the best portmanteau I’ve read in a while. Lol

    September 7, 2014
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    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      I’m pretty proud of that one.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
  4. Lara
    Lara

    Ooooh, next time you should call it a Snarknado. Like that made for tv movie.

    September 7, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      Yeah, I felt like it needed to imply explosion, though.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
  5. Laina
    Laina

    I just basically slept for 2 days straight. I’ve got some version of the plague and I’m temporarily deaf in one ear.

    September 7, 2014
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    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      Gross. I hate when my ears get clogged up, because it’s always like, just one side. If it’s going to be infected, at least be symmetrical.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
      • Laina
        Laina

        I got squeezed in at the doctor’s today and apparently neither of my ears look good. I’m on antibiotics now! I’m so special XD

        Also I have officially been awake for… almost 5 hours without taking a nap! That’s a record for the last couple hours!

        September 8, 2014
        |Reply
  6. Donna Asher
    Donna Asher

    I’m sorry to hear about the rabies shots. I had them when I was a small child about a hundred years ago – back then (and in a country where vaccines weren’t always reliable), I had to have one a day for a month. Do they still administer them on the abdominal muscles? Because that sucked and I will never forget it.

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
  7. Ange
    Ange

    Simultaneously dealing with tendinitis in both wrists and a weirdly blown up foot. My husband delightedly told me I now walk like Mr Burns lol.

    Does the rabies vaccine give you a bad reaction? We don’t have rabies in my country so thankfully that’s one I get to avoid.

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      Ha, Mr. Burns. Because of your wrists. That is pretty funny.

      I didn’t have a reaction to the vaccine at all, except that on the first day it knocked me out. My daughter gets a little hive around the site, though.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
      • Ange
        Ange

        That’s not too bad. Reading below though it looks like most of the pain is in your hip pocket instead, damn.

        September 8, 2014
        |Reply
  8. Gael
    Gael

    Rabies! Does health insurance cover that? It’s horribly expensive as a travel vaccine in my country 🙁 Hope you’re all safe.

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      It covers it, but get this, we still have to pay our co-pay, and the only place to get the shots is the hospital emergency room. So I have to pay $200 x 4 for every visit, and it takes four visits. Then my husband and I had an extra visit because the first time they didn’t have enough vaccine. So we have to talk with the insurance company and have a little come to Jesus about how I’m not paying a jillion co-pays for one treatment.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
  9. TellCosy
    TellCosy

    New baby and pink eye along with allergenic rhinitis! Woohaw! Reading your blog always reminds myself I have a half-finished book rotting away in the depths of my computer.

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      Oh god, the baby doesn’t have pink eye, does it?

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      Not to say your pink eye is something to brush off, I just remember how awful it was to have a sick baby while being sick myself.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
      • TellCosy
        TellCosy

        No, not yet. I’ve been pretty vigilant with sanitizer and having my husband take care of him for now. And no, totally agree that it would be horrible for both of us to be sick at the same time — the house would melt down, haha.

        September 8, 2014
        |Reply
  10. Akri
    Akri

    We had a bat get into our house through the chimney a few weeks ago. Cute little guy, but dumb as a brick. “Oh, you’ve opened the door so I can leave? Let me just keep flying in circles instead.”

    Best part was that I had been in voice chat with my brother when the bat showed up, so he got to overhear the entire fiasco. And since I couldn’t hear him (I’d been using headphones) he typed responses to everything he was hearing. Some highlights:

    “Open the door? OPEEEEEEN THE DOOOOOOR”
    “Fuck you, don’t shove me in a towel”
    “You can make this into an epix story. Replace ‘bat’ with ‘dragon’ and ‘towel’ with ‘net.'”
    “Don’t be silly, squeaking is exactly how it works.”

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      You were squeaking to try to lure the bat toward the door, weren’t you?

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
  11. Tio
    Tio

    I remember my mom talking about how we needed to avoid going out at night because RABID BATS. Ours were just outside though, not inside.

    I hope whatever good news you have coming from Chicago requires you to go there, because I live there and scheduling conflicts caused me to miss you at the last Authors conference book signing you were at here. I had totally bought a paper copy of The Girlfriend just to get it signed, too. COME BACK TO ME JENNY.

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      I think they’re more dangerous outside than inside. And yes, I did go to Chicago, but I didn’t have a signing or anything. 🙁 I was just there for two days on some business. I will be back in the area in 2016, though. I know it’s forever away, though, and probably no consolation.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
  12. Jon
    Jon

    Horrible. I have a massive phobia/hypochondria based anxiety around rabid bats (there is apparently a rabies strain that UK bats have but other mammals can’t pass on or some such) and I have actually been rendered partially incapacitated as a result.

    I hope the vaccines have all gone well as I hear things about the rabies jabs that are not pleasant (although they probably have to put me off them somehow).

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      The shots actually aren’t too bad. Everyone made such a huge deal about how painful they were going to be, but they weren’t. My kids definitely didn’t like the immunoglobulin shots, but even those were fine, the poke was the worst part.

      September 8, 2014
      |Reply
      • Jon
        Jon

        Glad it wasn’t too bad.

        Awaiting the Buffy recap eagerly.

        September 9, 2014
        |Reply
  13. Bubbles
    Bubbles

    My dad had to have the rabies shots a couple of years ago and they are awful! And yes, very $$$$.

    This episode of This American Life is one of my favorites. It includes a story from a woman who was attacked by a rabid raccoon and had to get the vaccines. Scary shit.

    And the David Sedaris piece is hilarious too.

    http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/319/and-the-call-was-coming-from-the-basement

    Maybe enjoy once the whole experience isn’t as fresh a hell as it is now.

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
  14. AmyR
    AmyR

    Ah, bats in the house. My favorite “laugh about it later” story involved bats. It was my birthday, I was 9 months pregnant (daughter was born 5 days later), and 2-1/2 year old son got a stomach bug, which he then passed on to me. Hubby was working that night, so I had the kid in bed with me. I had been up sick half the night when at 3 am kid puked all over the bed. I got him settled back in his own bed, got sick again myself, stripped the sheets, and was about to take them downstairs to the washer when a bat flew up the stairs at me out of nowhere. It flew into the bathroom so I shut the door behind it, said, “fuck it,” left the pukey sheets in the hallway, and slept on a bare mattress. Fortunately the bathroom was not needed again until morning.
    And the bat? My husband couldn’t find it in the morning and was convinced I hallucinated the whole thing. Until he found it in our son’s room sleeping in the Diaper Genie! He was able to gingerly get the whole thing outside before the bat woke up!

    September 8, 2014
    |Reply
    • Teresa B
      Teresa B

      The Diaper Genie? That’s hilarious! I’m convinced bats can fly through walls. One got into our house and I could NOT find out where it got in.

      September 11, 2014
      |Reply
  15. Oh my gosh, you just realized my mother’s fear. Growing up we were always told to stay away from any bat because basically they all carry rabies and would for sure bite us and we’d have to get rabies shots which were like the worst thing you could ever have done to you. I hope for your sake her exaggeration skills were strong and they are not so bad at all!

    September 9, 2014
    |Reply
  16. JordieBelle
    JordieBelle

    Hey Jenny I’ve been wondering: I know you get a lot of blowback when you turn a critical eye on popular culture (eg 50 shades, songs) and some if it reaches insane levels of intensity. I wondered whether your Buffy recaps attract the same level of crazy criticism (eg some of the awful stuff you’ve described re the kind of messages you get from VERY ANGRY PEOPLE who are OFFENDED by your THOUGHTS on something they CARE ABOUT VERY MUCH!). I feel like maybe Buffy people might be more able to understand that it’s ok to criticize the stuff we like. Is this true or am I living in a dream world?

    September 10, 2014
    |Reply

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